The Unsolved Chapter
by Your Iron Lung
Summary: While investigating what remains of the infamous Léry's Memorial Institute for their popular channel, two Youtube celebrity ghost hunters go missing overnight, vanishing in a freak occurrence that has decided to lay claim to their souls. Featuring Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej from the Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural web series.
1. The Institute

'_Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters.'  
Stephen King, The Shining_

**1**

* * *

Léry's Memorial Institute was probably the filthiest building Shane had ever stepped foot in, which, when you took into account just how many foul, decrepit locations he'd been to in the past, was really saying something. The building itself was beautiful in its own haunting way, as most older buildings often were, but Léry's took the definition of ruined to a new extreme he'd yet to see before now. It was an architectural thing of beauty to be sure, but the grit and grime that covered the entirety of the stonework did manage to dampen his enthusiasm for exploring the dilapidated structure.

And he had been excited for it, originally; a chance to fly back to Illinois to shoot the season finale of Unsolved on his home turf had been generally appealing, even if he hadn't heard of Michaelstown or Léry's before. But then they'd all gotten their first look at the Institute, looming horribly tall over the long horizon of pines as they drove up to it from the bumpy dirt road, and he felt all his excitement leave his body in an instant, evaporating like a cold drop of water on hot asphalt.

The silhouette had been menacing and boxy, regal in an old fashioned way that modern constructions had abandoned in favor of more modern designs. It was, perhaps, one of the most imposing feats of architecture he'd ever laid eyes on; it certainly ranked up there with Waverly in his mind, and perhaps that was why he felt so inexplicably nervous as he'd looked at it. Rather than dwell on it, he compartmentalized his anxiety away in his brain and turned to make a comment about how spooky the hospital was to Ryan, but whatever effects looking at the building had had on him appeared to have hit his co-host three times as hard; Ryan's brain already looked like it was melting, an expression of mute terror written plainly across his face.

Shane couldn't fault him for that, considering his own momentary scare, and was actually grateful for his silence. If Ryan had pressed him for a comment on whether or not he thought Léry's was haunted in that moment, then Shane might've reluctantly admitted that, in the event that ghosts were real, he wouldn't be surprised to find a few here, but Ryan had been too horror-stricken to ask. In all actuality, no one on the team had been up for much conversation after that first initial glimpse, an uneasy vibe settling into all of them as they parked. They had all taken a moment to appreciate how terribly ominous it looked against the backdrop of a sunset red sky before TJ ushered them into their usual business routine, unpacking their equipment and getting their bodycams set up.

"Man, I feel like Jack Torrance walking into the Overlook here. This building feels downright _predatory_, man," Ryan said, voice already shaking with nervousness.

Evening was falling fast upon them as they shuffled around in the entrance hall, carefully avoiding the large panes of broken glass and other debris that littered the floor. The layer of dust on the ground was so thick, distinct footprints could be seen as clear as though they'd been walking through snow, their tracks leading around in circles as they got their first look at the interior.

Shane hummed a noncommittal response as he shined his camera light around, disgusted by the amount of dust on the floor and in the air; if he were an asthmatic, he'd probably have run through several inhalers just from walking in.

"So tell me what I'm looking at here, Ryan; what's the history behind this magnificent pile of rubble?" Shane asked as he nudged a thick piece of wood with the toe of his boot.

They would cover most of the history of Léry's Memorial Institute in the voice over, but that wouldn't be done until they got back to California and Ryan had yet to tell him much about the place. Keeping Shane in the dark about the past of some the places they went to was a good way to get genuine reactions out of him, but he felt that if they didn't start bantering soon then Ryan would lose whatever was left of his poor, impressionable mind.

"I feel really weird," Ryan said instead of answering, glancing around the area with wide, uncertain eyes. "There's like, some kind of an energy in the air in here; do you feel it?"

"No," Shane replied calmly, though that wasn't entirely true. He could feel something akin to static in the air around them, but he didn't register that as a supernatural phenomenon. The air felt charged in a way that reminded him more of an impending thunderstorm getting ready to unburden itself than it did of something unearthly. "It is a little chilly, though; probably should've worn more layers."

"Good Christ, I hate it here already." Ryan shuddered and rubbed at one of his arms as he turned to look down the dark hallway that lead further in. "Right, so. Léry's. I couldn't find any information on who the original owners were, or who built it, but I _did_ find out that the original building was built sometime in the 1800's."

"This isn't the original?"

Ryan shook his head and reluctantly took the lead in guiding them down the long, narrow hallway, adjusting the straps of his bodycam rig subconsciously as he went.

"Well, yes and no," he said, stopping every few steps to shine his light and camera into any rooms they happened to pass. "The original building was just a really big mansion the owners lived in before they donated their land to the government; all this hospital space was added onto it during the Korean War to help rehab returning vets."

"This is one hell of a remodeling job; the Property Brothers would be proud with how many square feet they managed to pump into this thing," Shane remarked, grinning a little when Ryan let out a slight laugh. "So, army hospital?"

"Yep, up until the CIA took possession of it in the 60's, and that's where all my research brought me to dead ends. I couldn't find what they wanted it for or what they did with it after they got it, but boy, the conspiracy theories run wild with this one." He turned to flash Shane a conspiratory grin.

"Are you gonna use the voice on me?" Shane asked with a roll of his eyes. "Don't lay it on _too _thick now; save some for the voice over."

"Some say that the CIA turned Léry's into a black site in order to perfect 'information gathering' techniques they'd wanted to put into practice during the war," Ryan began, easily slipping into the professional tone of voice he used for narrations. The familiarity with which he spoke seemed to restore some of his confidence as they continued down the hall, as he no longer seemed to shrink away from the darkness surrounding them. "They reportedly hired a large number of staff to run the medical facility, but no records of anyone working here exist- at least to the public-, though there are rumors of one particular doctor who was well known for his sadistic use of electro-convulsive shock 'treatments'."

"Torture, you mean," Shane said, shining his light into a room of indeterminate purpose. Ahead of him, Ryan nodded in affirmation. "Great, a secret torture hospital. I'm sure you'll get a lot of angry, resentful ghosts to talk to here."

Ignoring his comment, Ryan continued his monologue, clearly having spent time rehearsing it. "Supposedly. As the rumors go, they began implementing experimental interrogation methods on American citizens first before moving on to actual spies, and oh- oh my god, that's a fucking big rat," Ryan sputtered, his Unsolved voice breaking as he skipped back down the hall and almost knocked into Shane, who barely managed to sidestep his panicked retreat.

He couldn't help but chuckle a bit as he put an arm to Ryan's shoulder to steady him before stepping ahead of him, shining his camera light into what looked to be a large reception area. It was wide and spacious, full of dark corners with plenty of dust and run down furniture covered in graffiti. The rat Ryan had stumbled upon was underneath one of the waiting room benches, turned over on its side and very clearly dead, though it was exceptionally large.

They stared at it together contemplatively for a moment before Shane said, "I gotta tell you, Ry, that I am not at all thrilled about spending the night here. I think I might ask my mom to call your mom to tell you I can't come to your little sleepover."

From behind, they could hear Mark laugh before stepping into the room, aiming the lens of his camera at the rat for a dramatic close-up they could potentially use to promote the episode.

"That's disgusting, don't film that," Devon said, clicking her tongue in disapproval as she placed her hand in front of the camera lens until Mark lowered it off his shoulder. "This place is foul; I can't say I envy you boys for staying here one bit."

"Yeah, no kidding," Ryan muttered. "Hell, I might cancel the sleepover myself, no moms involved."

"You can't, you already walked out of one overnight this season," TJ cut in, to which Ryan responded with a quietly spoken 'fuck' under his breath. "Let's just start filming, yeah? The sooner we get this done, the sooner morning will come, the sooner you can leave. Now, where do you think you're gonna want the static cams set up?" TJ asked as Mark held up the bags he'd carried in with them.

**2**

* * *

Against Devon's wishes, they decided to film the intro for the episode in the lobby with the dead rat, the compromise being that Shane and Ryan had to sit on opposite sides of the hallway that lead back the way they'd come so that the rodent's body wouldn't make it into the final shot. This was agreeable to all of them, but as Shane sat there, waiting for the camera to start rolling, he couldn't keep his eyes from wandering back to its corpse occasionally, trying to deduce what it could have died from.

They tried to film with what little natural light they had left, but the sun had already been sinking when they'd arrived. Whatever light it managed to provide ended up fading away too fast for them to effectively use, eventually prompting TJ to insist on bringing in big, bright lights so they weren't stuck filming in the dark. As Shane squinted into the newfound light source, his eyes adjusting poorly to the brightness, he managed to get a better look at the room they were set up in.

Based on his own opinion and how little he actually knew about Léry's, it certainly didn't _look _like the kind of place run by a malicious, CIA sanctioned group of sadists; to him, it looked like a hospital, plain and simple. The white paint along the walls was cracked and peeling, revealing discoloured splotches of drywall that furthered the eerie, run-down atmosphere the building had as a whole. Regardless of that and the dead rat, there was nothing in the general vicinity that implied Léry's might have been used for something as sinister as torture- they even had what looked to be remnants of vintage motivational posters decaying behind the reception desk. Despite how foreboding the building had looked from the outside, inside it both looked and felt normal, which made him wonder again about where his original discomfort upon viewing the building might have derived from.

"This week on the season finale of Buzzfeed Unsolved: Supernatural, we're investigating Léry's Memorial Institute in Michaelstown, Illinois as a part of our ongoing investigation into the question, are ghosts real?"

Hearing Ryan's voice pulled him from his thoughts. Unaware that they'd begun the segment, Shane turned to look at the camera Mark was holding and shook his head curtly on cue. The motion was well-practiced and concise, even if he was still squinting because of the lights.

He waited patiently as Ryan spoke of what he knew about Léry's alleged history, repeating a lot of what he'd already mentioned to Shane earlier for the official intro. He went more in depth as he talked about the history of the building to the camera than he did with Shane, adding on some embellishments about the various conspiracy theories he'd dug up that involved what the staff at Léry's might've been up to, and none of it sounded good.

"Léry's was condemned and abandoned in 1983, and was even rumored to have been burnt down, but as you can see, since we are currently sitting _inside _the building, that clearly isn't the case," Ryan recited, shooting Shane a look that invited him in to begin a banter.

"Ryan, I swear to God if you're trying to tell me that the building itself is a ghost, I _will _resign." Shane forced his face into a serious expression that matched his disapproving tone of voice as Ryan laughed loudly. "You can get Brent back to be your new 'ghoulfriend' and you can just- the two of you can just run around these spooky places like a couple of headless chickens screaming about ghosts together."

"No, that's- that's not what I'm saying," Ryan said, a humorous inflection tinging his voice as he spoke. "What I'm saying is, is that someone either lied to cover up any potential future investigations into Léry's alleged operations, or someone got it wrong; either way, Léry's is still here."

"And how'd you come to find that out?" Shane asked, honestly interested in Ryan's answer. His friend had already admitted that researching the place had been hard and often netted him no real answers; if any and all official documentations surrounding Léry's said it was no longer standing, then he wondered how Ryan was able to discover that it actually was.

"I looked up the coordinates on Google's satellite image maps." Shane raised his eyebrows at that, and Ryan shrugged in response. "There was a building here, and when I compared it to old images of the Memorial Institute I'd found dated pre 1980's, they seemed to match. When I reached out to the current property owners, they agreed to let us look around as long as we didn't try to 'solve' anything."

"We never do," Shane said wistfully, dramatically looking away for a moment, and again Ryan laughed, the sound of it echoing around the walls of the room.

"Alright, whatever, big guy; we can do all the ghost hunting we want, they said, but we have to let the sleeping dogs lie on whether or not Léry's has a 'tortured' past or not; they don't want any trouble with the government." Ryan looked amused by his own pun, but Shane knew that his ability to find humour in little things like that wouldn't last the night.

"Well, let's get started then, shall we?" Shane said, slapping his hands to his thighs and beginning to feel his eagerness returning to him. He started to stand up, and Ryan sighed.

"Yeah, fuck, let's- let's get into it."

**3**

* * *

"Is there anyone here with us right now?" Ryan spoke loudly and clearly as he addressed the spirit box, glancing around the room they were standing in cautiously as he held the small radio up between them. There was an overturned examination table and some rusted chairs in the room with them that Shane had initially tried to sit in, but found them too unstable to support him. "If there is, we'd really like to talk with you. My name's Ryan, and my unnecessarily large friend here is Shane; I know he's a little frightening to look at, but can you say either of our names?"

They waited for a response, Ryan pensively shifting his eyes around as though he might see a ghost hiding behind the old furniture while Shane did his best to not let his boredom show on camera. He waited silently for a moment, letting the spirit box spit out jumbled radio frequencies and broken fragments of words for Ryan to analyze later before deciding to chime in.

"Did you ever stop to think that the spirit box might be triggering these spirits you're trying to contact?" he asked, voice drawling as he tucked his hands into the pockets of his denim jacket. "If that doctor you mentioned earlier really did exist, then don't you think it stands to reason that the static from the box might be traumatizing them? Torturing them in their afterlife? Maybe that's why they don't want to talk to you."

"You're just saying that because it tortures _you_," Ryan said, snickering. He opened his mouth to say something else in support of his use of the spirit box, but was hushed when it began to pick up an unusual, garbled sort of noise.

If Shane hadn't been accustomed to the usual tones of static the spirit box produced as it skipped through radio frequencies, he would have chalked the sound that was coming through the speaker now as typical spirit box sounds, but innately he knew that it wasn't. Whatever was coming through the radio now was different, in that it had cut through the previous channel of static to effectively broadcast the new sound.

He could tell from the stunned reaction on Ryan's face that he, too, recognized the sound as something unusual. This wet, static noise that was coming through the receiver had been unheard by either of them before.

Ryan turned his head to look up at Shane, any trace of amusement he'd been displaying before now gone as he struggled to make sense of what he was hearing. Before either of them could properly process what they were listening to, the sound slowly tapered off into silence.

Shane stared at the box in Ryan's hand, waiting for the usual sounds of static to come back through the speaker so he could explain the phenomenon away as some sort of malfunction. He was preemptively formulating a response to the questions Ryan was sure to start asking when the whispering began.

The voice was low and quiet, possibly male, and managed to speak uninterrupted for more than a few consecutive seconds. Shane felt his skin break out into goosebumps as he listened, leaning forward to try and get a better understanding of what was being said even as Ryan recoiled, almost dropping the spirit box in his fright.

If the voice was whispering in any known language, Shane didn't recognize it; the words registered as garbled, barely distinguishable nonsense to his ears, but the tone with which it spoke, intent and persistent, had his hair beginning to stand on end. Everyone in the room was hushed, although Ryan was beginning to hyperventilate, his breath coming in fast, wheezing gulps. His hand was visibly trembling, but he resolutely did not drop or set the spirit box down, a small act of bravery Shane admired him for.

They didn't have long to focus on what the voice was saying before a loud, burst of static tore out of the speaker, ending the strange noises abruptly and causing Ryan to shout in surprise. Shane blinked solemnly at the little box as it returned to flickering through regular radio channels before he met Ryan's stupefied gaze.

"What the fuck just happened," Ryan gasped out, quickly turning the box off and setting it aside to deal with his minor anxiety attack.

No one had an immediate answer.

"Did anyone recognize what it was saying?" Devon asked timidly. "Not trying to be an alarmist here, but that… didn't sound human to me."

Ryan moaned at the implication and sat down hard on the floor, uncaring of how dirty it was.

"Look, let's just all calm down and take a minute to think about it logically," Shane said, attempting to take control of the situation in order to soothe his companion's panic, but he didn't feel calm himself. His heart was thudding away rapidly in his chest, though he told himself that it was due in part to being taken off guard by the loud outburst of static that came through at the end of the transmission. "Do you know every earthly language that exists?" he asked Devon, who shook her head reluctantly. He repeated the question to Mark and TJ before directing it to Ryan, and all their answers were the same. "Neither do I; just because it spoke in a language we can't immediately identify doesn't mean it wasn't human. Have we all forgotten we're in an old, ex-governmental building that was run by the fucking _CIA_? The box probably just latched onto an old numbers station or something.

"And anyway, I'd expect you to be more excited about this, little guy," he said gently to Ryan, trying to encourage a positive reaction out of him. "We caught all that on film, buddy."

From the floor, Ryan had stopped his rapid breathing as he processed Shane's line of reasoning. He still looked frightened, but his expression also seemed more speculative after listening to Shane deliver his cowboy speech. When Shane reached a hand down to help him up, Ryan took it.

"You're right. We have evidence," Ryan said slowly as he rose back to full height, his eyes lighting up as he clasped Shane's hand tightly to his chest.

Shane winced and tried to pull his hand free, but the clammy grip with which Ryan held to it was strong. "It could be any number of things before it could be ghosts, Ryan, you know that."

"But if it's not any of those other things, then it- it's real! We have actual, recorded evidence! Léry's Memorial Institute is certified haunted, baby!"

He let go of Shane's hand at last, his fear momentarily forgotten as he did a quick dance, pumping his fist up and down into the air in a celebratory fashion. Mark trained the camera on him to capture the moment, swapping from Ryan's joyful expression to Shane's look of bewildered amusement. Devon looked on with a congratulatory smile until TJ eventually spoke.

"You… do realize you still have to stay the night here, right?" TJ said somberly, knowing that what he had to say would was going to affect Ryan negatively, and already they could all see the impact his words had on him as he stopped dancing. "I'm happy for you and all, but don't forget we have a whole episode left to shoot." Fresh horror dawned on Ryan's face, his excitement over finding proof of the supernatural immediately dying out when he realized it didn't absolve him from fulfilling the rest of his contractual obligations.

"Oh, fuck, you're right," he said with a groan, his shoulders slumping at the remembered thought. He brought his hands to his face and dragged his fingers down, pulling at his skin. "Ohh, _fuck_, you're right. _Shit_."

"Certified haunted, baby," Shane teased with a weak grin, knowing already that it was going to be a long, sleepless night for the both of them.

**4**

* * *

They explored the area a little further after the incident with the spirit box, but didn't manage to capture or illicit any other supernatural responses to their presence, though not for lack of trying. Everywhere they went, Shane demanded that the ghosts repeat the strange audio they'd managed to capture before and called them out on their cowardice when nothing happened. Ryan grew increasingly upset with his behaviour, but Shane was out to prove a point: whatever they'd discovered through the use of the spirit box wasn't something supernatural, and if the spirits weren't willing to entertain them, then he wasn't willing to entertain the notion that it _could_ be ghosts.

The logical part of his brain demanded he debunk it immediately, even if it meant he had to poop all over Ryan's parade in order to do so, and he planned on taking the mightiest shit he could before they wrapped up filming for the night.

**5**

* * *

Most of the upper floors of Léry's were condemned and deemed too unsafe for them to explore, barring their ability to scope out the building in its entirety, but the ground floors were plenty big enough to take up hours' worth of time to investigate.

With Mark and TJ's help, they set up three static cams where Ryan thought they'd get the most activity: one in the room where they'd gotten the spirit box to communicate with them (with an EVP device they would leave on all night), one in the reception area pointing down the hall they'd entered through, and the final one in a room Ryan had called the 'treatment theatre', where they'd decided to bunk down for the night.

It was a circular room with one single, ominous examination table set up in the middle over a system of rusty, grated flooring. A large set-up of outdated lighting systems hung low and broken over it, hanging like an untended widowmaker's tree waiting to collapse, and for the first time that night Shane wondered if perhaps Ryan's torture theory might have some truth behind it. Copper stains could be seen leading from the table to the grated floors, and he resolutely decided not to focus on them.

On the floor above them, reached only by a set of stairs set into the back of the room, was a windowed viewing booth that jutted out from the wall. A sense of unease overcame him as Shane looked at it, wondering what the people of the past had need of to stand up there in a room such as this, but he knew in the back of his mind what the answer to that was.

He tried to tuck his discomfort away as he laid out his sleeping bag next to Ryan's, and wound up unsettling some dust into the air as he smoothed it out and plopped his pillow into place. He grimaced and tried to suppress a cough, but doing so only made the urge to cough worse. Ryan watched him hack whatever he'd inhaled into the crook of his arm, a wry smile of amusement playing at his lips.

"Need some water?" Devon asked, stepping forward with a water bottle already in hand.

Shane took it gratefully and drank until he felt his throat clear up. "Thanks," he said as he capped it and set the bottle down beside his pillow.

"Should we see you guys out?" Ryan asked as Mark finished adjusting the camera that was set facing their sleeping bags, the red recording light already blinking with purpose.

Mark shrugged as he stood, taking his big shoulder camera back from TJ, who had had been dutifully holding it for him so he didn't have to set it on the dirty floor.

"Nah, I think we can find our way out on our own," TJ said as Mark wiped his knees clean of the grime. "I know you'll probably just bolt if you get anywhere close to the exit anyway, Bergara."

It was Shane's turn to smirk as Ryan scowled, knowing that there was definitely some truth in that statement. Ryan had been unusually on edge throughout the rest of their investigation after their incident with the spirit box, and all Shane's goading had done was make it worse.

"Have a good night, guys," Devon said, looking uncertain about leaving them alone. She gave a little wave as Mark and TJ each said their goodbyes in turn. "We'll see you in the morning; be safe, okay?"

"We'll be fine; what's the worst that'll happen? A rat takes a nibble out of one of our ears?" Shane mustered up a smile he hoped looked assuring, but Devon didn't seem comforted by it.

"The closest hotel we could book is 20 minutes away, but even still, don't hesitate to call if you need something," she said, and TJ nodded in affirmation.

"We'll come as quick as we can," he said, and Shane wasn't sure why, but his words left a heavy weight in his stomach.

"Guys, we'll be _fine, _this isn't our first rodeo," Shane said exasperatedly, and Ryan backed him up with a nod.

"The ghoul boys know how to behave themselves during a spooky sleepover," he affirmed, but didn't have the confidence required to back up what he was saying.

Still, Devon looked a little less doubtful and finally relented. She bid them goodnight once more before the three of them took their leave, carrying all the extra equipment Shane and Ryan wouldn't need away with them to make packing up a little easier in the morning.

None of them knew it would be the last time they ever saw each other.

Shane sat down on his sleeping bag with a slight grunt and listened to their crew's footsteps receding out of the room and away from them, echoing down the hall ominously. He waited until he couldn't hear them anymore before he started getting ready for sleep, peeling away the opening of his sleeping bag to tuck his long legs inside.

"And then there were two," he said rather cheerfully to Ryan as he got comfortable. He was met with a miserable sigh as his co-host begrudgingly slid into his own sleeping bag. He zipped it up promptly and stared up at the ceiling bitterly.

"You say that every time they leave, give it a rest already."

"But it's true every time it warrants being said," Shane replied, drawing his phone out of his pocket and opening up Twitter. "We're the only two people left in here; anyone else doesn't exist, and you seem to need reminding of that fairly often."

Ryan sighed shakily and turned his flashlight off, casting them both into the gloomy darkness, broken only by the glow of Shane's phone as he scrolled through his social media feed.

**6**

* * *

"Shane? Are you awake? I'm kinda freaking out hardcore over here, buddy."

It took a moment for Shane to register that he was being spoken to as he blinked the sleep out of his eyes, rolling over in his bag to face where Ryan was laid out. As his vision adjusted to the dark, he could see that Ryan was wide-awake, still staring up at the ceiling where the viewing booth stuck out like a sore thumb.

"What?" Shane asked, his voice heavy and tired, rumbling out of his throat in a low timbre. "Whatsit?"

"I- I can't sleep," Ryan admitted, his voice sounding small.

"Surprising absolutely no one," Shane muttered before yawning loudly and rubbing the crust out of the corners of his eyes; he'd only been just been able to fall asleep before Ryan woke him up.

"Shut up," Ryan grumbled. "It- I can't sleep because it feels like- it feels like we're being _watched. _I know it's just the dark, but sometimes I think I can see people up there, looking down at us._"_

Shane turned his gaze up to the viewing booth, but couldn't see anything that looked like what Ryan was worrying about. His eyes did try to force shapes out of the darkness behind the window, but he intrinsically knew that it was just his mind playing tricks on him, trying to get him to see things that weren't actually there. "There's no one here but us, Ryan," he reminded him, turning his attention back to his friend.

"But the voice on the spirit box-"

"-was just a voice," Shane cut in. "And look, I'll be honest with you- it was a little jarring, and I'll admit to being a little unnerved by it myself, if that makes you feel any better."

"Wh- no! Why would that make me feel better?" Ryan spluttered, finally tearing his eyes away from the booth above them to fix his wide-eyed stare on Shane. "You're supposed to be my, my grounding rock, my calming spirit; how can you be scared? You're not allowed to be afraid, I- _I'm _the one who fears!"

Shane stared at Ryan for one wordless minute before breaking out into a hearty laugh, his voice carrying around the room and making it sound louder than it was.

"Alright, calm down there cowardly Heisenberg; I didn't say I was scared, just unnerved," he clarified. His laugh seemed to ease some of Ryan's worries, as his face cracked into a tentative grin at his words. "It was weird, yes, but nothing else strange happened while we were walking around, did it?"

"No, I guess not," Ryan admitted, looking a little sheepish now. He contemplated Shane's words quietly for a moment before he asked, "Do you really think it was just a numbers channel?"

"I think it's a possibility, yes," Shane said, picking his words carefully so as not to exacerbate Ryan's anxieties. He honestly had no idea what it was or what it could be, but he wasn't anywhere near ready yet to admit that it could've had supernatural origins. "We're in a weird old government hospital; I think the most likely thing to have happened is that our little boxy pal picked up on a weird frequency we weren't supposed to have access to and gave us a glimpse into something that wasn't meant for us."

"Yeah, but, we're in _Illinois_," Ryan began, picking at the zippered hem of his sleeping bag as he put the thoughts he'd been ruminating on into words.

"So? If you're about to start shit-talking this wholesome state, so help me God, we're going to have to start exchanging some serious words here."

"No, that's not what- Look, Illinois is in _America_; what possible radio frequency being broadcast here could we have picked up on that doesn't speak English, or any other spoken American language, or even human?" Ryan asked, gesticulating around them as he spoke.

Shane sighed and rolled onto his back, adjusting his pillow to better support his neck. "You don't know that it's not any known human language, Ryan, we established that. It was probably just some kind of a looping cipher the CIA forgot to turn off when they moved out, not some- some _demon _speaking to us in tongues."

Beside him, Ryan groaned loudly and quickly withdrew his arms back into his sleeping bag, as though he were afraid that by naming it, one would suddenly appear.

"_Please _don't say demon."

"You just did," Shane said, unable to keep himself from speaking rather snidely. Ryan shot him a pointed look of annoyance, but he couldn't help his uncooperative attitude in that moment. He was sleepy, and could feel all the dust they'd been breathing in coagulating deep in his lungs. He was irritated, and he let it show. "Look, Ry, we can discuss this all we want tomorrow, but I am incredibly tired right now. Just… try and get some sleep, okay? We'll pick this up later."

"I think we both know that's not gonna happen," Ryan muttered, but he mercifully let the issue drop.

Whether or not their conversation had helped or hindered Ryan, Shane couldn't say. It had been a strange night for both of them, all things considered, and he wanted nothing more than to just be done with it. As he closed his eyes to try and go back to sleep, the last thing Shane would later recall seeing was the darkness taking shape in the form of a face looming behind the window pane of the viewing booth, looking down upon them intently. A strange metallic taste wouldn't leave his mouth no matter how much water he drank to try and ride himself of it, and although Ryan had forsaken the notion of sleep for himself entirely, he too eventually drifted off unawares.

And that was all it took; by the morning they were gone, taken without a trace, everything they'd brought with them left behind and undisturbed.


	2. Into the Fog

**1**

* * *

There was no sign of a robbery, nor even a hint of a struggle when the camera crew came back to find Shane and Ryan's sleeping bags empty the next morning. The static camera that had been pointed at them all night was still there, red light on and blinking dutifully with purpose, unaware that the subjects it was meant to be capturing were now gone. No one quite knew what to make of it as they looked upon the untended sleeping bags laid out so pristinely with no one in them, but they didn't suspect that anything odd had happened- not at first.

"Maybe they're just out exploring something they forgot to film last night," Mark suggested with an easy shrug, not yet concerned about Shane and Ryan's respective absences. He strolled over to where the overnight camera was still recording and knelt down to turn it off and pick it up, ready to pack it away.

"They left all their gear here, though," Devon said, voice wavering uneasily as she pointed out where the small, handheld cameras they used to film while walking around had been left behind. Even their cellphones lay discarded between the two sleeping bags, explaining why they hadn't checked in with her when she'd texted earlier. Dread coiled low in her stomach as she watched the little green alert light flash unread on both of their phones.

Mark stared at their discarded equipment with an odd, curious look in his eye that Devon couldn't decipher, but if she had to take a guess, she'd pin it as something close to concern. He opened his mouth to say something but then shut it, shrugged again, and wound up saying, "In that case, they probably just went out to take a piss or something; they'll be back."

Devon wanted to ask him how likely that actually was, but didn't. Instead, she looked to TJ for his thoughts on where they might have gone, attempting to convey her unease to him without words. He had the authority to declare their disappearances an emergency if he thought there was enough cause for alarm to do so, and she was beginning to suspect that there was. She thought of the voice the spirit box had projected to them the night before and shuddered.

"If they're not back here in ten minutes, we'll start looking for them," TJ said after a moment, sounding more annoyed than anything. He checked his phone for the time and sighed irritably as he tucked it back into his jacket pocket. "With how antsy Ryan was last night, you'd think he'd be raring to leave as soon as he could. He knows as well as I do that we're on a tight schedule for this one, we don't have the time for them to be fucking around."

It wasn't the answer she'd been hoping for, but it was one she could live with. They'd start looking for them eventually, and that was better than not at all.

Of the three of them, Devon admittedly was the closest to what Ryan called people who believed in the supernatural as 'Boogaras'; Mark and TJ were strong-minded skeptics like Shane, and wouldn't think to attribute their disappearances to something unworldly. Even though she wasn't an advent believer in ghosts and spirits or the like, she nevertheless maintained the faith that they _could _exist, and that nagging, back of the mind thought of '_what if_' was persistent enough to make her want to review the overnight recordings, just to know. Just to be sure that the terrible voice really had nothing to do with it.

"Could I take a look at that real quick?" Devon asked quietly, addressing Mark who was still holding the static camera. He gave it over to her without comment, though he seemed hesitant to do so, pausing slightly as it traded hands.

With the camera in hand, she sat down on the bottom hem of one of the sleeping bags and pulled out the side screen, a worried crease marring her brow as she powered it back on. Mark walked away from her and milled around the room idly before TJ made the decision to start the search early.

"Text us if they come back before we do; we might as well go get the other cameras now to save some time," TJ said to Devon as she fiddled with the camera. He got a brief nod of acknowledgement in response before he turned away, gesturing for Mark to join him in his effort to roundup the rest of their equipment.

As they left the treatment theatre, she could hear them calling out Shane and Ryan's names loudly as they slowly wandered away from her, echoing choruses of "Shane! Ryan! What the fuck, guys?" bouncing unheard off the walls. She bit into her lower lip, gently worrying at it with her teeth as she began to watch the playback of the overnight footage.

Fast-forwarding through the camera crew's departure, Devon resumed normal play speed once the recording reached the point where Shane and Ryan were first left alone. She listened keenly to the conversation they'd shared the night before, trying to gather as much insight into their disappearances as she could despite the fact that the audio was tinny and un-optimized. The conversation ended when Shane went to sleep, but from what the night vision allowed her to see, it looked like Ryan had stayed up for a good while longer. A small smile of amusement broke her look of severe concentration as she fast-forwarded until Ryan was finally able to sleep, his head humorously twitching around as he looked after phantom noises in the dark.

There was nothing immediately alarming in the video as she slowed it down and sped it up intermittently, but she wasn't sure what exactly she should've been looking for, or if there was even anything worth seeing. There was no dark, mysterious, looming figure hiding in the shadows behind them that was waiting to pounce on them now that their guards were down. There wasn't even any sort of weird half-formed manifestation of a disturbed spirit upset with their presence hanging over their bedrolls, or anything else that could suggest supernatural foul play; the footage simply showed Shane and Ryan asleep in their bags until it didn't.

Devon paused and blinked, not realizing that she'd lost sight of them. She rewound the footage to find the point where they'd disappeared on screen, watching with surprise as they popped back into frame a minute later, sleeping soundly with Shane rolled onto his stomach and Ryan turned over on his side. She watched the video carefully as she let it play, and again, it showed them sleeping undisturbed until it simply didn't.

Incomprehension spread quickly across her face as she backed the video up and played it forward again, trying to make sense of what she was seeing; their bodies weren't blinking or fading out of the picture, the recording wasn't skipping frames or glitching, but after the video reached a certain point they just weren't _there _anymore.

She felt cold as she checked the time stamp, watching the seconds as they passed by uninterrupted, indicating that there was no recorded loss of time. Everything was working as it should be, nothing had been tampered with; Shane and Ryan were simply gone. They just _were._

'_Here today, gone tomorrow,' _her mind unhelpfully supplied for her as she sat staring numbly at the screen.

Distantly, she could hear the combined shouts of Mark and TJ as they continued calling out, their voices no longer calm but tinged with panic as they failed to locate their friends. They were almost screaming, and the sounds were shrill to her ears.

It was still in the early stages of fall the day Shane and Ryan went missing, but already a cold, steady wind was blowing unimpeded through the long and empty hallways of Léry's Memorial Institute.

**2**

* * *

There were many times when Ryan would wake up the morning after an on-location shoot and forget where he was and what he'd been doing the night before. Bleary-eyed and poorly rested, he'd roll over in his sleeping bag to relieve an ache in his back or a kink in his neck from a night of sleeping on hard floor and slowly give himself over to wakefulness. It always took a few minutes for his mind to catch up with his memory, and when it did- when he remembered correctly where exactly he was- his anxiety would flare up until he checked to make sure no ghost or _demon _ had done anything harmful to him in the night. But even after he inevitably found himself unscathed, it wouldn't be until he saw Shane still asleep somewhere nearby that his panic would begin to abate, little by little, his tall friend's presence offering him more peace of mind than he could ever provide for himself. This made the mornings where he woke up alone and disoriented all the worse, serving as a not-so-gentle reminder that he relied too much on Shane's ability to ground him. He doubted he'd be half as brave as he scripted himself to be without him, and some days, knowing that about himself stung.

So when he woke up face down in a pile of brown leaves, alone and with no knowledge of where he was or how he got there, his first instinct was to panic.

Ryan slowly pushed himself off the ground and sat up, dead leaves clinging to the side of his face like they were still attached to the branch of a tree. He could feel his eyes bulging as he looked around, his breath hitching in his chest when he saw no sign of Shane nearby. Their sleeping bags and equipment were also gone, and as he frantically checked his hoodie pocket for his cellphone, he was distraught to find that it wasn't with him.

He sat still in the middle of the clearing for a moment longer, wrestling for control over the fear that threatened to consume him. He forced himself to take in deep, calming breaths and closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind and flush his body of the terror he wasn't quite sure was warranted just yet.

When he opened his eyes again, he did feel somewhat calmer, but the fluttery manifestations of his anxiety still held firm in his chest, making his voice tremble when he finally spoke. "Shane?" he called out tentatively, hardly able to raise his voice louder than a whisper. He slowly brought himself to a stand as he waited for a response, though if there was one to be heard, he didn't hear it.

The dead leaves crunched underfoot as he turned around in place warily, scanning the surrounding trees for any sign he might have missed that indicated Shane could be nearby. There was a slight fog ghosting over the forest floor that made it difficult to discern if anyone else was in the area, and again, the terror of realizing he'd woken up outdoors when he'd definitely fallen asleep _indoors _threatened to overtake him.

"Shane?" he called again, mustering his resolve to speak louder and be properly heard. His voice carried and echoed through the trees as he waited with stilled breath, trying to tamp down on the fear that he could feel threatening to burst out of him like a bird full of aspirin. He called Shane's name again, still louder, and even he could hear the subtle, frantic tones lining his voice as the echo supplied by the surrounding woodland repeated it shrilly back to him. He opened his mouth to call out a fourth time, but was stopped mid-inhalation when he was finally met with an answering grunt.

Relief flooded him as he heard Shane's heavily sleep-laden voice respond at last, a mumbled, "'m over here, Ryan," being one of the sweetest sounds he could recall having heard in recent days.

"Oh, thank God," he mumbled to himself, taking a moment to breathe deeply when he felt the tremble in his voice creep out of his throat and into his limbs.

Ryan followed the direction Shane's voice had come from over to the edge of the small dell, wherein he found him sitting with his back pressed up against the trunk of a thick tree, sat facing the deeper recesses of the dark forest. He was covered head to toe in leaves, looking very much like he'd been the victim of some errant landscaper who'd been too assed to dump the load elsewhere. Shane himself looked thoroughly confused about it as he started swiping the leaves off the sleeves of his denim jacket.

"Are we- are we _outside_?" he asked, looking up at Ryan in surprise when he got closer. The corners of his eyes were still crusted with sleep.

"Sure seems like it, bud," Ryan said, reaching down to offer a hand to help him up. He couldn't help his nervous laugh as Shane took it and sprung up suddenly, scattering the leaves around him unceremoniously.

In the back of his mind, Ryan both hated and envied how calm Shane looked, even if he had just woken up and didn't fully understand what was going on yet. Not even five minutes ago Ryan had been in the same situation and had immediately taken to panicking, whereas Shane, for the most part, appeared unbothered; Ryan found his ability to maintain relative calmness at all times endlessly frustrating when he couldn't manage to do the same for himself.

"Okay," Shane said slowly, looking around them curiously, taking in their surroundings with unfocused, sleep-ridden eyes before he looked back to Ryan. There were still a few dead leaves trapped in his flyaway hair, making him look like some kind of tall, displaced woodland nymph in Ryan's frazzled mind. "Mind telling me why that is?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. I woke up over there," Ryan said, pointing back the way he'd come. Shane craned his head to look into the small glade, confusion written plainly across his face.

He furrowed his brow and scratched the side of his nose, dislodging some of the crust he found there as he shifted his eyes back and forth between Ryan and the area he'd allegedly woken up in. "Is this some kind of bit you're trying out?" he asked slowly and uncertainly, flicking away the crusty discharge on his finger.

"What? No, this isn't a _bit_." Offended, Ryan took a step back and then gestured around them. "How, or better yet, _why _would I want to do this? Who would even find this funny?"

Shane squinted at him dubiously and quirked his brow sharply, mistrustfully. "This is a bad bit, Ryan."

"It's not- this isn't a bit!" Ryan exclaimed, his fear momentarily taking backseat to the indignation he suddenly felt. "I'm not trying to _Punk _you here, dude; I don't know how we got out here, okay? I'm fucking _scared_, and if you're just going to stand there and- and _criticize _me over a bit I'm _not even doing_, then- fuck, man."

Ryan's breath left him in a single hot exhalation, his body shaking with the strain of trying to relay how serious he felt the situation was. Shane stared at him, equal parts surprised and taken aback; rare were the days when Ryan actually let his frustrations with his skepticism loose, and those arguments never ended well. A memory surfaced in his mind of an argument they'd had that had gotten so out of hand they'd resorted to only communicating through texts for an entire week. Everyone had suffered from it, and rather than continue to antagonize him, Shane's timid nature demanded he relent, lest they undergo a repeat of that chaotic event.

"Alright, calm down, no need to tear me a new one," Shane said placatingly, his soft brown eyes looking down at his companion sympathetically. Ryan forced himself to take a deep, shuddery breath and irritably wiped away the leaves that were still plastered to the side of his face, practically slapping himself in his urgency to be rid of them. "Let's just, head back inside and we'll get it all sorted out, alright? I'm sure Teej and the rest of them are wondering where we are by now; it must be, what, seven? Eight? Hell, maybe even _nine._"

Shane wriggled his eyebrows scandalously in an admittedly poor attempt to lighten the mood, hoping to have the minor argument dismissed entirely. Ryan's lips twitched into a frown as he shrugged carelessly, taking the bait to look at his watch to confirm the time. The digital display didn't light up when he tilted his wrist towards himself, though, which he found odd, since he distinctly remembered having charged it only two nights ago in preparation for the trip. He glanced up at the sky to try and judge the hour in relation to the sun, but it was too gloomy and overcast for him to determine anything concrete. He couldn't even pinpoint the sun's location through the cloud coverage, which again struck Ryan as odd; he'd made sure to check the weather days in advance to make sure they didn't get rained out, and from what he could remember, it was supposed to have been nothing but clear skies and strong sunshine all week long. There'd been no mention of clouds or low-hanging gloom, but when he pointed this fact out to Shane, he merely shrugged and glanced at his own watch.

"Meteorology isn't an exact science, Ryan; it's more of an… approximation," he said casually, to which Ryan groaned loudly in frustration. Shane ignored him and tipped his wrist to glance at the clock face of his own watch and was met with a curious stillness. The hands weren't moving, and didn't start ticking again even after he tapped the glass expectantly. He frowned, but didn't give it anymore thought. "Odd as it is," he said while adjusting his jacket sleeve back over his wrist, actively avoiding Ryan's scrutinizing gaze, "let's just start heading back. You know how TJ gets when he's trying to maintain a schedule; he's going to crucify us if we miss the flight."

"Are you seriously going to ignore the fact that _both _of our watches are dead?" Ryan asked, perplexed by Shane's nonchalance. He was met with a simple shrug in response and could feel the indignation he'd felt earlier resurfacing. "Something seriously fucking weird is going on here and you're not even going to acknowledge it? We both woke up _outside, _for fucks sake! I understand that because of your Bigfoot ancestry, this might come as normal for you, but this is _not _a normal occurrence for me! I don't even have my phone with me to call TJ; do you?"

Shane paused, a half-hearted attempt to explain away just how they'd both woken up displaced and outdoors dying on the tip of his tongue at the mention of his phone. He checked his pants pockets first, patting his Chinos down vigorously with a frown before moving on to his jacket, but didn't find it there, either. When he realized his phone wasn't actually on his person at all, Ryan finally saw a flash of vulnerability crack through his calm exterior. Shane's face fell, and he looked more confused now than he had when he'd woken up underneath a pile of long dead leaves.

He lowered his arms slowly and took another long look around them, finally coming to realize that their bizarre situation was due in part to some external factor that was thoroughly out of their control.

"Bergara, you better swear to me right now that you're not trying to prank me here-" he began to say, his voice pitched low in warning.

"I swear," Ryan said, speaking earnestly and perhaps a little too eagerly. He didn't like the way Shane was so quick to mistrust him, even if it was in his nature to be skeptical. "Again, there's no way I'd even be able to drag your freakishly long body out here without waking you up first; I'd fumble all over your bonestilts and drop you down a stairwell or something before I could even drag you through the exit. You're a heavy sleeper, but even you wouldn't be able to sleep through a broken neck."

Shane's brows were knit tightly together in a very serious expression that Ryan didn't see very often except for when he was deeply involved with whatever he was researching. Shane looked around the clearing as if he were seeing it for the first time, his hands absentmindedly fiddling through his pockets, still trying to find the phone that wasn't there.

"Okay," Shane said after one long, contemplative minute. He nodded once to himself, and then turned his attention back to Ryan; clearly, he'd come to some sort of an understanding. "Okay, so, we've been kidnapped."

"Oh my God, Shane, _seriously_?"

In a way he was right, though neither of them had any way of knowing that at the time.

**3**

* * *

No matter what Ryan had to say on the matter, Shane really didn't want to hear it; in his mind, he'd already come to accept the fact that they'd somehow been doped and kidnapped from Léry's to be left in the woods for some undetermined, yet surely nefarious purpose. He'd decided they were probably going to be held for ransom at some point, but when Ryan tried to point out all the flaws in that particular theory, Shane shut him down and refused to hear him out.

It didn't matter to him that their alleged kidnappers had left them alone, unbound, untended, and free to leave. He didn't care that no one who likely knew who they even were could possibly know that they'd come to Michaelstown, Illinois to ransom them in the first place; he didn't care about any of that because the fact that it could've been related to something supernatural scared him too badly to admit. Ryan tried to call him out on it multiple times, but each time he did had only served to isolate Shane from him.

The woods were perpetually gloomy; no sunlight was able to breach through the cloud coverage or dense treetop foliage as they walked along, though the worst part of it all, Ryan soon found, was that it was utterly silent all around them: there were no birds, bugs, or other ambient forest sounds to be heard over the consistent crunch of leaves as they plodded along. It unnerved him deeply, but again, Shane wouldn't hear it.

They'd wandered a little ways away from where they'd awakened before realizing that neither of them knew where they were in relation to Léry's. The tall, monstrous building that had terrified them on a subconscious level was nowhere to be seen as they walked, and when Shane understood that they were, essentially, lost like babes in the woods, more of his mask began to chip away, and Ryan began to see the fear that was being harbored underneath.

He seemed skittish, almost; edged and on guard in a way Ryan had never seen him before that he could liken to how he himself got moments before being locked alone in a room to commune with spirits. If he hadn't been so admittedly angry with him, Ryan would have sympathized, but he was stubborn and couldn't find it in him to rescind his annoyances at that point. If Shane was scared, let him stew in it for a little while; let him get a real taste for it.

**4**

* * *

"We're lost."

"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock; even Watson could've figured that one out."

"Tone it down a notch, sassmaster Bergara. You're supposed to stay put when you're lost; it makes getting found easier."

"Are you taking into account our alleged 'kidnappers' when you say that it makes getting found easier, _scoutmaster_ Shane? God forbid we get found by themagain; can't wait to see where we'll wake up next! Find out on the next episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved: Naked and Afraid edition!"

"As entertaining as our viewers might find that, we aren't- we're not _naked, _Ryan."

"But we _are_ afraid."

**5**

* * *

They came across the campfire rather suddenly and without warning, stumbling out of the gloom with all the perplexed awareness a cat might have when it walked into a room it thought was empty. Aimlessly, they'd wandered around the forebodingly quiet woods, arguing back and forth intermittently over who was right and who was wrong and what course of action they ought to take, not knowing they had been following a predetermined path the whole while.

It lead them by the nose, guiding them through the woods until It brought them where It wanted them to be, where It needed them to be.

Ryan stopped dead in his tracks the instant they breached through the broad trees they'd been trekking through diligently, frozen in place at the sight of the burning fire and the grim looking people seated around it. He could feel his eyes bulging again as he was met with equally perplexed stares, and to his left he felt rather than saw Shane also coming to a standstill beside him. His first instinct was to turn around and leave back the way they'd come, already afraid of who these people were, but Shane stepped forward in another act of boldfaced bravery Ryan would later envy him for.

"Hi," Shane began, raising a hand in greeting, sounding relatively casual and not at all afraid, "sorry to bother you, but my friend and I got lost on our hike. Been out here a while and our phones died; could we borrow one of yours to call a friend real quick? Let him know where we are?"

Again, Ryan found himself admiring how easy it was for Shane to adjust from one situation to the next, effortlessly coming up with a believable lie that would presumably get them the help they needed. Perhaps the improve class he'd taken in college actually had left him some valuable talent after all.

There were six people in all sitting around the fire, each one of them turning their attention to Shane when he spoke, but his request for aid was met with absolute silence. While Shane held the brunt of their unreceptive attention, Ryan took the chance to get a good look at the people he was addressing and immediately noticed something strange. They all looked incredibly weary and downtrodden, their clothes and faces grimed with dirt in a way that suggested they'd been outdoors for a very long time. Ryan didn't like what the implications behind that might mean for them.

"Hiking, huh?" one of the men asked, finally speaking up when no one else would, a strange smile twisting his lips up into a sharp smirk that Ryan found to be immediately disingenuous. "Just where were you boys out 'hiking'? Aren't any trails near here to get lost _on_, 's far as I know."

Caught in his lie and thoroughly unnerved by the situation as a whole, Shane didn't have a response properly prepared. Ryan felt him beginning to flounder, a blank, frantic look taking hold over his face as he tried to come up with something believable.

"Well how'd you get out here, then?" Ryan asked, taking charge as soon as Shane lost it to flip the interrogation around. "Like you said, there aren't any trails as far as _you _know; doesn't mean _we _don't know where to find them."

Ryan expected the man to get angry with him then, but the unsettling grin on his face only grew wider as he broke out into a laugh. It was loud and carried around the area well, bouncing off the nearby trees and resonating loudly around them. Despite how unnerving Ryan had initially found him to be prior, he found the man's laugh to be warm and inviting. It was charming, in a way, and Ryan found himself letting his guard down against his better judgement, the tension he'd been holding in his shoulders slowly easing away.

"The kid's got moxie, like you," the stranger said, turning to the only other man in the group, who rolled his eyes in response. "Why don't you and your big friend there come take a seat by the fire and we'll tell you what all's going on here, eh?"

The charming nature that had eased Ryan into being comforted by his laugh lost some of its potency with the man's phrasing. A red flag was slowly being raised in the back of his mind, warning him intrinsically against heeding the man's request. His train of thought fractured, each line following a path of potential reasoning as to why he shouldn't.

Maybe Shane had been right after all; maybe they really _had_ been kidnapped and had spent all that time walking around lost in the woods trying to get out only to end up back in their kidnapper's arms. Horror movie scenarios played out in his mind, the plot of _Deliverance_ coming out on top in order to terrify him against the thought of running into people this deep in the woods, but these people gathered here hadn't been quite so forward with their foul intentions (if indeed their intentions _were _foul) as the West Virginian hicks had been.

The part of his brain he left partitioned to believing in the supernatural had him, for one quick moment, entertaining the idea that they'd come across a group of trickster fae, and somehow that scenario was the worst of them all.

He spared Shane a quick glance, and from the look on his face, Ryan could tell that he'd also taken some alarm to what the stranger had said. The man still had an easy smile about him, but the way the others around the campfire were all looking at them with such dreadful expectancy in their eyes had him feeling uneasy about the arrangement.

"Why don't you just tell us what's happening from over there, pally?" Shane said lightheartedly, but with enough of a commanding undertone to let them all know he wasn't about to let themselves be taken advantage of. "Don't really feel like singing 'Kumbaya' with you all just yet."

The man looked at them thoughtfully for a moment, his smile lessening in intensity but never quite leaving his face entirely. "Where do you think you are?" he asked eventually, and the question he posed was curious enough in nature that it took them both by surprise.

"Where? Look, man, we just want to phone a friend to get out of here-" Shane began saying, speaking dismissively in an attempt to forego the question.

"Alright, and that's fine; no one's going to deny you that," the man said easily. Ryan wished the guy wasn't wearing sunglasses so he could cross-check the truthfulness of his words with his eyes. "You aren't where you think you are, though, is all I'm trying to say.

"Where were you before you wound up here, David?" he asked suddenly, turning towards the muscular man he'd addressed earlier.

"England." The man- David- responded effortlessly, grunting out the answer in a thick, British accent. His eyes glinted dangerously in the fire's light as he met Ryan's, staring him down over the flames that burned brightly in the dusk.

"And what about you, Feng?" the original, as of yet nameless man asked, addressing one of the girls who shot him a mean look and didn't answer. He laughed lightly at her sour expression and shrugged in a way that said 'well, what can you do'. "I was in Vegas, myself. Staying at The Flamingo before I ended up here."

"Buddy, I don't know what it is you're trying to do here, but if you can't help us then we'll just go," Shane intervened impatiently. He sounded nervous, and it wasn't hard to understand why.

Everything about this was just so _strange_; even a skeptic like Shane had to admit that they'd stumbled upon something that was truly, inexplicably weird. They were lost in the remote woods of Michaelstown, Illinoisin an area that shouldn't have been inhabited; the fact that they'd come across anyone else at all- let alone _six _people- chilling around a bonfire was disconcerting enough on its own, but the thing that was really beginning to mess with Ryan in that moment was the fact that he'd realized he recognized one of those people.

Looking at her, he hadn't been sure at first because he couldn't place how or where he'd seen her before, but he'd eventually come to the realization that he _did _know her, face, lit passively by the fire, was so familiar to him that he was hit with a strong case of of déjà vu, the knowledge of how he knew her teasing him by slipping in and out of his ability to latch onto that specific memory.

"I _am _helping," the man replied, a hint of frustration finally edging out in the tone of his voice. His grin faltered for a moment as he tilted the brim of his baseball hat back to rub at his forehead exasperatedly, rearranging the dirt that had accumulated there into a peculiar looking clean spot. "You're just not _getting it_; you might have gotten lost, sure, but you're not in Kansas or wherever the hell you came from anymore, is what I'm saying."

"Illinois," Ryan said dumbly, earning a sharp look from Shane. The man fixed his hat snugly back into place atop his head and nodded, flashing him a self-assured little smile.

"Sure," he said. "Illinois. Vegas, England, wherever; doesn't matter. Not anymore."

"What does that mean?" Ryan asked carefully, his eyes flicking from the man he was speaking with to the girl he was still trying to remember. She was watching the interaction carefully but with an air of boredom, her chin tucked securely into the palm of her hand while resting her arms on her knees.

"Ryan," Shane said sternly in warning. "Don't."

Ryan ignored him and walked further into the clearing, stepping in close enough that he could begin to feel the warming effects of the fire as he drew closer. His eyes bored into the dark lenses of the man's sunglasses, searching out his eyes curiously.

"You'll find out soon enough. Look," he said, pointing behind them, back the way they'd come, "it's about to start."

Hesitant as he was to take his attention away from the man, Ryan followed his finger and looked back obediently. A heavy, thick layer of fog was steadily rolling in amidst the gaps between the trees towards them unassumingly. It crept in from all sides, crawling towards the fire pit intently like a moth seeking light. Shane looked startled when he realized it was seeping in around his ankles, covering his feet in a fine whit mist. He lifted his feet out of the wisps and stepped in closer to the fire, making his way to Ryan's side with a bewildered look on his weary face.

"Quit toying with them, Ace; you're being purposefully cryptic for no reason." The girl Ryan was still struggling to remember finally spoke, sounding testy as the fog continued to roll in. She pulled her chin out of her hand and sat up, stretching out her back with a slight groan. "You're being an asshole just for the sake of being an asshole; you haven't told them anything."

"If you had a welcome speech prepared, Jane, you could have cut in at any time," Ace retorted, but he didn't sound mad, only tired. "I don't think any of us were expecting anyone new, and anyway, in _my_ experience, the best way to understand any of this shit is to dive into it headfirst. We don't really have time for them to learn any other way now."

Ryan's mind was flooded with a barrage of questions he wanted to ask, from what the fog was to what Ace meant by 'learning', but when he heard mention of her name his mind sparked in instant recognition. The memory that had thus far been successful in eluding him finally made itself wholly available to him, and as he looked upon her face once more, he wondered how he hadn't instantly recognized her before.

"You- you're Jane Romero!" he blurted out unexpectedly, eyes going wide, unable to contain his shock at finally realizing her identity. He faltered and gaped, his words getting stuck and haunting the back of his throat when he tried to force them out. "Shane, holy shit, that's _Jane Romero."_

At first, Shane didn't understand; couldn't comprehend why that name should mean anything to him at all even though it apparently held the weight of something important. The girl Ryan was pointing out looked just as confused as he felt as he ran her name over and over in his mind, trying to pull up the relevant information he must have had stored about her until he remembered why that name was as impactful as it was to Ryan.

"No," Shane muttered quietly, his own eyes lighting up as he came to the same conclusion Ryan had. "No, Ryan, there's no way that's-"

"Jane Romero." Ryan repeated her name in whispered awe, and as much as Shane didn't want to believe it, he knew it to be true. "We- we did an Unsolved episode about you!"

She was far more weathered and tired looking than she'd looked from the photographs Ryan had showed him when they'd reviewed her case for an episode of True Crime, but beneath the dirt and world-weary expression of exhaustion, there was no mistaking it: sitting hunched over by the fire was the fabled talk-show host Jane Romero, whose missing persons case had gone national before it went cold and she'd been assumed dead. The authorities had regarded it as an open and shut case after her car had been found submerged in a large body of water by the Jersey turnpike, but there were some peculiarities about it that true crime enthusiasts everywhere had picked up on that made her disappearance worth looking into on a deeper level.

The episode had been Ryan's idea, as most of their episodes were, and as they'd reviewed the evidence and all the oddities surrounding her alleged death, even Shade had admitted that something weird must have happened to her the night she'd disappeared. It was a lot of little, fine details that had added up to paint a large, sketchy portrait of a woman who'd either faked her own death, or had fallen prey to something worse.

"I don't… know what that is," Jane said, speaking slowly. She looked between Shane and Ryan uncertainly, one of her groomed eyebrows arching high in question.

"It's our- we, we have a web series where we investigate true crime cases and paranormal shit-" Ryan started to explain, but was too flustered to finish what he wanted to say. He shook his head halfway through his explanation, purposefully derailing himself to focus his amazement at having found _the _Jane Romero, alive and well in the woods of Michaelstown, Illinois on his partner. "Holy shit, Shane, did we actually just solve something?"

"As touching? Impressive? _Astounding_ as this is," Ace began, groaning slightly as he brought his lanky form to a stand, straightening out the lapels of his dusty blazer, "we don't have time to be discussing who knows who from where. Show's about to start, fellas."

The unintroduced group of others begrudgingly came to a stand at Ace's lead, Jane included. Some held items in their hands that Ryan hadn't noticed before, and as he was about to ask Ace _what _exactly was about to start, he was hushed suddenly. At the moment he opened his mouth to pose his question, the fog that had been steadily rolling in rose up suddenly to obscure his vision and thickened immeasurably, blanketing him in its wisps until he couldn't see anything at all.


End file.
